Fear's Precious Heart
by petitehero
Summary: Sam and Dean's hunt for a creature causing mass amounts of people to die prematurely of heart attacks leads them to a young psychic who has been chosen by forces of a decidedly volatile nature as their heir apparent. Castiel plays a part in illuminating the history of this ancient being. Thrust into the supernatural world, it becomes a choice of being an unimaginable ally or enemy.
1. Tea for Three Too Many

_It was a starry night when I first saw Death's eyes watching me. _

I looked up as two young men in suits walked into my shop.

"I've put the crystal ball up for the night, boys. Check the hours next time, eh?" I gave them a smile.

"We're not here for a reading, ma'am." The shorter one said. He flashed a badge at me and strode all the way into the room. "We'd like to ask you a few questions."

"I've got a license. It doesn't expire for the next three years."

"We're not here about that either. We're here about the murders."

My smile melted, falling off my face like caramel on a poisoned apple. "Are you? Well, I have much more insight into the future than the present, I'm afraid. Why are you coming to me? I hear the FBI isn't too keen on relying on my kind of talent these days."

"We've had a change of heart. Do you know what connects Jane Thomas, Nick Belaire, and Meredith Lee?" The taller one looked at me with cold eyes. "Your shop."

"It's a right shame what happened to those people, but I want nothing to do with it." I bit my lip on the sentence, thinking back to their pale faces behind my eyes at night. _Is my future bright?_ Everyone wants to know the same questions, will I be rich, will I fall in love? They all asked the same thing. The same damn thing. Not these three. Something worse. _I feel like I'm going to die soon_. It wasn't even a question. How was I supposed to tell them every answer I could give them was wrong? I shook my head loose of them, bringing myself back to the men now sitting in at my table.

"Which is understandable, except you have everything to do with it already, don't you?"

"I-I don't know what you're talking about. Do you really have to be here? This whole affair is bad enough for business as it is, and business was bad enough as it was." I kneaded the tablecloth with my hand, causing stars and moons to crinkle.

"What exactly are you, Ada?"

I looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"

"Now, we've been watching you, and for all intents and purposes, you look like a nice whatever you are, but we need you to be straight with us."

"I'm a woman trying to run a business!" I yelled, no longer nervous.

"Don't lie to the authorities, Ada, we can—"

"I was fine enough playing nice with you up till now, but leave. Or I'm going to call the _real _cops." I gave them pointed looks.

They looked at each other grimly.

"We are—"

"Please just shut up and leave. He's going to show up any second, and I've got to—"

"Who's going to show up any second?"

I closed my eyes. "You're Sam and Dean, right?" I opened my eyes in time to catch the surprised looks on their faces. "Right."

"How do you-?"

I fished a piece of paper out of my pocket, worn from being crumpled and smoothed again and again. The drawing consisted of rough lines made from gritty charcoal and red. The blood was red. It was a picture of two boys, mouths open, screaming or shouting. Behind them were three tombstones. Beside them was the man, holding a balloon with my name scrawled on it. I drew that picture three months ago, at one in the morning. In my sleep.

"I know because you are the last. You are the last people I will see before Death comes, carrying my name."

_I first felt Death's eyes watching me on a starry night. _

There was a trickle of silence before their voices poured in.

"What are you, Ada?" Dean asked, taking on his brother's cold look.

"A second-rate psychic. Now please leave. Please. If he's coming, I want this to be quick and painless." I pushed myself back from the table, crumpling the piece of paper once more and tossing it aside, its premonition delivered. I had hoped that it was just a blip in my brain, but then the nightmares came in a string made of twisted spider's silk, weaving together first the murders and the man I sometimes saw on the edges of my vision. A man I now knew was going to confront me once and for all.

"You're not even going to fight this?" Sam asked. The cold intensity of his stare faded into a kind of acceptance. It was like the blame of the murders was slowly washing clean of me, and I was a person now instead of a villain, a…a whatever type of _thing_ they'd thought I was when they came in here.

"Three months, three deaths, and three of us here. I'm starting to see a pattern, and the next thing in it doesn't involve me breathing for very much longer." I looked back at him blankly. I didn't want either of them to see the fear that had left marks on my face for weeks as I slowly realized I wasn't imagining the horrible coincidences that had been happening lately. People dying of heart attacks at obscenely young ages, animals running away en masse. The whole town was a mess. "I've seen him you know. Always walking about in a black suit. It's morbid."

"What does he look like?" Sam asked.

"Like a bad romance novel. Tall, dark, and handsome. Probably thirty or so. Drawn cheeks. He's not a happy-looking guy."

The boys exchanged a long glance. The communication was uncomfortably subtle, like they'd said a hundred years' worth of dialogue in a few seconds. What were they to each other that they could speak like that?

"That's not Death." Dean said assuredly, tensing a little bit. I sank down into my chair, the desperate energy of the moment drained.

"What?"

"That's not Death. We're kind of on a first-name basis, and he isn't anything like you described. More like scrawny and old, with a knockoff Severus Snape hair cut and broody eyebrows."

"Look, I don't even want to know what the hell kind of life you lead if you run into Death enough to get personal, but hey, if you're pals with the guy, do me a favour and drop him a line on your way out and get him to stay the hell away from me." I got up again, this time to open the door to the shop.

"It's not just about you."

I stopped cold. I glanced back at Sam.

"If you're not responsible for this, great, fine, we don't have to kill you. But there's an epidemic in this town, and you're our only lifeline to the source of it."

"What do you expect to do about any of this?"

"Slay the monster, save the damsel. We'll do our _job._"

"If you think that—" I cut off abruptly as I caught sight of a shadow on my peripherals. Don't look, I coached myself. Do. Not. Look. But there was a draw to that sliver of an image, that splinter of a man's face. Ice snaked its way in veins across the surface of my skin, prickled my nerves. I turned and I stared Death—or at least my Death—in the eyes. He stood on the other side of the door.

"We need to speak." His words were unscathed by the glass, sounding pure as if he was whispering them straight into my ear. To speak with Death was to speak in the tales of a dead man. Fear clawed its way along my spine, through my organs, consuming, constricting…

"Ada?"

"Ada!"

I clutched at my chest as it beat with a broken heart. Oxygen came in crystal cut gasps. There was a moment where I lost my balance and leaned on the door frame, then there was a moment where there wasn't anything at all. I fell. And fell, until I hit a wall of black.


	2. A Date with Death

I woke up in a stark white room. There were four walls. No windows. No doors. I was slumped over in a stark white chair. Everything hurt to look at. I straightened up and folded in on myself, clutching my arms against the dead chill of the air. Where the hell was I?

"Can you focus?" I looked up to see my Death, sitting not even five feet away in a replica of the chair I was in. I startled. He definitely hadn't been there two seconds ago. And there wasn't a way to get in. What exactly was this guy? "I had your heart stopped a little too long, I think. No matter. There isn't any harm done I can't fix."

Now that I saw Death in full light, I could tell he was in his midthirties. He wore a dark gray suit with a loose red tie and his hair was carefully combed. He looked like a businessman more than a harbinger of mortal fatality.

"What do you want from me?" I asked. My voice rang out harshly in the blank white cube. I was calmer than I'd have expected. Maybe I really had come to terms with my impending death these last three months.

"Want from you?" He mused . "I just want to talk, Ada. For now."

"No. If you're going to kill me, fine. You owe it to me to make it as quick as the others."

"Oh, Ada. Do you really think you're on the same level as the others? I really would have thought you'd catch on by now that my interests in you are a little more…_personal…_than theirs."

"Then, what? What the hell have I ever done to you, or _anyone, _to deserve this?"

Death leaned forward on his hands and gave me soft, pitying smile. "Ada, I'm not here to _collect _you, dear. I'm pretty sure you have me confused with someone else."

"Well, you get near people, and they die. Pretty sure you're not Mister Congeniality or Captain Planet, so my last guess is Death." I figured I could afford being a little snarky if I was going to end up six feet below daisies anyways.

He laughed. He sat there, threw back his hands, and laughed.

"He'd get a kick out of that, he would." He wiped a fake tear from his eye. Then he sat up straight. "No, no. I've never been Death. I used to be an accountant from Maine, you know. And then one day, a man much like—_exactly _like I am now, he approached me and offered me something beyond my wildest imaginings. A position older than most of civilization as you know it. As anything knows it. Something heavens and hades alike have sought to keep. I'm not Death Ada, no more than you. I'm—"

A pain unlike any other I'd ever felt wrenched its way up my veins, seizing my heart, twisting my bones. I cried out in shock as I lurched forward, gripping my chest.

"Stop!" I screamed. "You already have me! Stop!"

Death—or whoever he was—pitched forward as well, pulling me up, face crunched up in anger.

"How dare—I'm not doing this! No! Not yet, there's still so much…" He spanned his fingers above my heart, face drawn in an unsettling focus. "They can't have you. I knew I should have killed them. But they would have had a fit above…blast it all."

Whatever his efforts were, they were futile. I felt my eyes burn in their sockets.

"I should have known they'd try to resuscitate you…"

I heard him scream out one last primal, fearful thing before I was captured once more into the dark.


	3. Sideways Eights

I came up screaming, writhing on the floor of my shop.

"God! Stop screaming!" One of the boys—Dean—shouted.

If I had any say in it, I would have continued screaming on principle. However, I didn't, and I continued anyway because I couldn't handle the immense amount of pain I felt…_everywhere. _I felt my eyelids flutter, threatening to black out for the third time. Hands were on me, feeling my wrists. Under my head, to protect me from the thrashing. The man in the suit, the one who was not Death but must be in the same family…his image was burned behind my eyes.

It took an eternity, but my body pulled itself together. Sam helped me up, helped me to a chair. I took a thin, frightfully unsteady breath as the boys looked at me tensely.

"Don't you ever do that again." I said finally, forcefully, as I gave them censoring looks.

"Save your life?" Dean asked, eyebrows raised.

"Pull me back from that place. If it wants me, let it keep me. At least that place didn't hurt."

"What place?" Sam.

"I dunno. It was some blank white place, like in the Matrix. Nothing was there except that man and me."

"What did he want?" Dean.

"He wanted…" I swallowed. Thinking back over the man's words, I wasn't sure how much I'd really learned. It was like he spoke in antiquated language, riddles. Nothing straightforward or concrete. "He said he chose me."

"For what?"

"I don't know. I just don't know." I ran my hands over my face in weary frustration. "Does it matter? It all means the same thing. I'm going to end up dead or worse."

"Did he tell you what he was? Where he's from?"

"He said he used to be an accountant from Maine. But he's obviously something creepier and less natural now." I moved to get up and both of them twitched a little towards me, as if they thought I'd collapse. Maybe. Just maybe. "Will you please go now?"

"You're kidding, right?" Dean asked incredulously. "You really think we're going to leave you alone after what just happened?"

"Look. I appreciate the whole manly slayers of the darkness thing you two have going on. Really. It's great." I looked him square in the eye. "But twenty minutes of icky scary life-threatening action hardly gives you any say or right to be involved in my safety or life. And before you say it, yes I do have a heart and no I'm not stupid. I'm sleeping with everything short of a complete armory under my pillow. So give me your numbers."

They shared another loaded look and I stood expectantly.

"Here." Dean scribbled some numbers down on a piece of crumpled paper from his pocket. He slid it over, the movement weighted. "And here." He reached into the oversized pockets of his coat and supplied a thin metal canister. He placed it in my hand firmly.

"What's this?"

"It's rock salt. It'll protect you against…the sort of things you'd want protecting from."

"Will it work on my friendly neighbourhood stalker?"

"Honestly? Probably not. But we've got to take every protection available."

I took a pen from a cup near the phone on a side table and grabbed Dean's hand. I scribbled my phone number down.

"To keep things even. Check in to make sure I'm alive every once in awhile, eh? But not during business hours. I've got a mortgage to pay."

I shepherded them toward the door. Sam turned and took my arm.

"You're handling this a lot better than most people would."

"I should, shouldn't I? I have people every day asking me to conference call dearly departed. Of course that's far out of the reach of my abilities, but a certain acceptance of the crazy comes with the territory."

"Just don't take this too much in stride. A little fear is healthy." His eyes should have reflected the youth of his face, but they looked eerily steadfast, like the eyes my Death wore. Eyes that had seen humanity breathe and writhe into existence, to fall and rise again.

"Take your own advice, kids. I don't know how far or intimately, but you both have been woven into this story as well. And my Death, he knows your names."

That night I fell asleep with all the lights on and a sharpened letter opener under my pillow.


	4. Moonlight and Mace

He found me in my dreams. I knew it the second he entered. I had been smelling a rose in the garden of a perfume factory, a formaldehyde-scented graveyard. And then his shadow crossed my own, a planet died, a moon dissolved into milk in a broken glass.

"You're really here, aren't you?" I asked calmly. It was easy to pretend I was safe in my own mind.

"I am." He sat on a stone bench across from me, fingering the flowers absently. "Do you always dream of such mundane, romantic things?"

"No. I've dreamt of you." I raised my eyebrows so he would understand the dryness of the statement, the intentional bite.

He smirked.

"Well, we know I am many things and mundane is hardly one of them."

"Are you going to stop my heart again?" I asked, clutching at my chest. It wasn't a pleasant experience. Waking up afterwards—I refused to think of it as coming back to life—hadn't been particularly dandy either.

"No. I just needed you in a state where only I could talk to you. I assume your new guardians don't include dreamwalking with their CPR skillset?"

"Sam and Dean? They're not my guardians. They're not my anything. I don't know what they can do or can't, but either way I don't care. I just want you all priority shipped right out of my life."

"I can take care of the boys if you want, but you're stuck with me I'm afraid." He paused a moment, then laughed as if he had made a really clever joke. "Afraid. That's good."

I let him have his moment then began to tap my foot in agitation. "Okay. On the table. Everything. Go."

He considered me with a bemused expression. "Yes, you'll do nicely I think, Ada. My name's…Fear. This decade, anyway. I'm a being created by the Maker himself. The goods and the bads of this little planet like to think I'm caught in a war between them, but it's all just folly on my end. They both want me and fear me to no end."

I took my own seat on a bench parallel to his. I needed to process. Did I believe him? If I did…say I did…how much? To what extent? An inch or a mile? I'd witnessed so many odd things in the past three months, spoken to strange characters…woken up with a tingly spine and charcoals spilling from my fingertips. I felt like I'd been thrown down the rabbit hole and drowned in a horrifying, new world. But it's only a childish despair to cling to things so clearly illuminated. There were a lot of things about this world we'd all been so, so wrong about.

And I had the chance to unlock the truth.

"You kill people." I hadn't thought about it much lately, more about me avoiding my _own _death, but now that I did, it was a huge factor in whatever my decision would be. "That's not okay."

"There are certain…_unfortunate _side effects to this position I'm offering, Ada. They can be contained. You can be a better Fear than I ever was, I'm sure. When I was chosen, the Pan—the employer—well, I—whatever. I was chosen as a warrior. You are chosen as a knight, a-a mage. Powerful in your own right, but with a heart that leaves you more inclined to protect with an unspeakable intensity than to rage war and plague across the world."

It was weird, looking at him as he spoke. Fear's face was awfully bright in the soft light of my dream. It was painted with a range of emotions that seemed…too human. I wanted to remember that he was the cause of a whole helluva spectrum of havoc in the real word, but in here he was more of a person than a thing.

"You're talking…heaven and hell?"

"Yes." He glanced at me absently, a little surprised maybe that that was the part I'd focused on. "Angels, demons, and that's not even the half of it. Hell, that's not even the one-eighth of it!"

"So faerie tales…they do come true."

"And nightmares. Lots of nightmares. But you can put an end to parts of them. Every story's happy if you tweak the ending. Take our resident nuisances, the Winchesters—that's Sam and Dean—they're currently Heaven and Hell's favourite playmates. They're hunters. They kill things that go bump in the night…and sometimes the world—well, at least a suburb or two—is safer for a few seconds."

"Okay…but what do you want from me? What are you protecting? Because all you seem like to me is just one more thing that goes bump in the night…'Fear'…you're literally the Bogeyman, and I'm not signing up for that."

"You ask intelligent questions. Good sign. Most people at this point in the pitch either see money or death, and that gets them horrible marks." Fear cleared his throat. "I want you…to help me die. I've been doing this job for far too long. Centuries. It's time someone else has a go before the new cycle starts. I'm protecting, well…" Before he could continue, a dinging sounded somewhere in the distance. "Ah. I've got some business to finish elsewhere. Another time, then. Sleep well, Ada. And be careful who you trust yourself with in the coming days."

He began to fade. I cried out.

"Wait! Stop killing people, okay! You said yourself, it's not necessary…"

He just gave me a half smile and disappeared.

The second I woke up, I reached for the phone and blindly punched in numbers.


End file.
